Cyberpunk

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What is Cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.

Cyberpunk characteristics include:

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This was another of those still images, where I wanted to capture a specific kind of place, the old farmhouses you find all throughout my hometowns, and a specific time of day in November when the sun has set and everything is this almost monochrome purple but the grass and crops look almost tan. In a few months, on cold grey days like this, when there’s a layer of snow on the ground, it almost mirrors the sky with just dark trees between them. But for now it’s this very specific color.

I used to go for walks or snowshoe trips most afternoons, and would often find myself hurrying to get back as night settled in. On those early evenings, I loved the yellow lights in the distance, the warmth and human routine they contained.

I wanted the farm in the comic to be a little more active than some of the ones back home. I did a fair bit of reading about agriculture UAVs and autonomous tractors, and I very much liked the used-future feel of the brand new stuff from those articles being kind of old and hacked-together at this point. Something these folks bought second- or third-hand, probably after it was already hacked by a previous owner to remove the manufacturer’s ability to remotely disable it. I like the idea that they have a sort of workshop/hangar for launching drones and inspecting their crops set up in the loft of the barn.

The standing figure is based a bit on my grandfather.

If want to read the rest of this silly rural cyberpunk webcomic about a stolen secret service prototype and the endangered deer it thinks is the president, you can find it here: https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/president-deer-adventures/

If you’d like to read the related-but-mutually-non-canonical short story version, you can find it here: https://en.scrappycapydistro.info/harbour it’s in the first edition, on page 3!

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Defect is a cyberpunk, squad-based, Immersive Shooter set in the last city of mankind, where THE SYSTEM, an authoritarian AI, rules with inhuman logic. Choose from a collection of dangerous factions—The System’s own policing force, Rogue Police Elements, or a host of gangs vying for power—play with friends in PvP or co-op. Compete to achieve objectives like smuggling guns, assassinating targets, or arresting suspects. Suit up with state-of-the-art weaponry and technology to give you the edge you need to live another day.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2470010/DEFECT/

(I promise I'm not trying to constantly post video game trailers. I try to post whatever cyberpunk media news I come across and there just happens to be more cyberpunk video games in development than any other media.)

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Hammerjack to c/cyberpunk
 
 

Neo Berlin 2087, a third and first-person action RPG developed by Elysium Game Studio. Players will engage with a deep cinematic detective thriller set in a dark future vision of Berlin. Get to the bottom of a conspiracy in a dystopian cyberpunk reality with the latest trailer showcasing new and re-designed characters, gameplay, levels, and cutscenes. Neo Berlin 2087 is coming soon to PlayStation 5 (PS5), Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store).

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Baby's first cyberpunk:

The show made a number of changes to the RoboCop universe to make it more appropriate for younger viewers, including replacing bullets with laser weapons and shifting the series to a more science fiction setting. In this series, RoboCop had a red light in the middle of his visor (which occasionally panned the whole visor). It is set in an alternate continuity where events similar to those shown in the movie happened ...

Based on the original movie, the series features cyborg cop Alex Murphy (RoboCop), who fights to save the city of Old Detroit from assorted rogue elements, and on occasion, fighting to reclaim aspects of his humanity and maintain his usefulness in the eyes of the "Old Man", Chairman of Omni Consumer Products. Many episodes see RoboCop's reputation put to the test or soured by interventions from Dr. McNamara, the creator of ED-260, the upgradable version of the Enforcement Droid Series 209 and the top competitor for the financial backing of OCP. He continually develops other mechanical menaces that threaten RoboCop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCop_(animated_TV_series)

Not sure how to feel about this -- it's got near-future tech, low-lifes, and corporate scheming. But the animation is 80s-era quality and the plots are generally pretty simple. It's ok background noise and historically interesting, I guess.

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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Hammerjack to c/cyberpunk
 
 

The cyberpunk metropolis Shinjuku—a massive city-state bedecked with neon signs, towering skyscrapers, and the latest cutting-edge technology. It is here, in year 2099 of the Fused Era, where the legendary Demon Lord Veltol has his second coming five centuries in the making. But this landscape is nothing like the one he conquered all those years ago, for the fusion of magic and engineering has elevated civilization to dazzling, unprecedented heights. Veltol may have been reduced to a historical footnote, but make no mistake…this brave new world will be his for the taking!

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This game looks similar to Observer as a first-person game with no combat about a detective trying to solve a case in a cyberpunk world. At least, that's my understanding from the trailers.

Available on Steam, Playstation, Xbox.

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This is actually a slight fan edit of the parade scene, to emphasize the soundtrack.

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Originally posted on [email protected]. Sounds pretty cyberpunk. WARNING: I haven't watched this, and it's got a 3.8 out of 10 on IMDB.

original text from [email protected]:

In a dystopian future, a bounty hunter and an ex-cop find themselves on a collision course with a crime lord and a militarized security force. Caught in a dangerous web, they're pitted against shadowy forces, cloned troopers and masked assassins.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/future_soldier

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An open question, related to cyberpunk culture.

Considering the possibilities of current social-engineering as used by social media and desinformation, to what degree ido you think it is now possible to 'implant' fake memories into somebody's consciousness, without that person noticing it.

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Awhile back I posted that one of my cyberpunk short stories got picked up by an anarchist fiction zine. I was excited because I had this related-but-sort-of-mutually-non-canonical photobash comic ready to go, about a stolen secret service protoptype and the endangered deer it thinks is the president. I don’t want to spam this community with my weekly updates, so I figured I’d just share the still panels, spaced out whenever I get to them in the posting schedule. They’re just quiet bits of art between the jokes.

There are a bunch of spots like this around my home towns. Not necessarily a business, not a house, just some kind of sandpit with an old workshop or metal building and some old vehicles in it. Probably if I really dug in to county records I’d find a registered business, likely defunct, in a local family name. Perhaps several. But usually they’re pretty quiet spots, at least until someone new buys them. I’d wanted to do the cyberpunk version of one of those.

(I’d like to extend a huge thanks to the ham radio community over on reddit, who were great sports about looking over an early draft of the building and the antennas, and who helped me with scale and even which antennas to include. The only one that came up as a possible issue was the discone on the back, and there was some debate on whether to scale it down to make it more ‘as expected’ or to leave it as an unusually large one, until someone settled it by mentioning that their mentor had had one about this size, which came from the Swedish military. I’m making a rural cyberpunk webcomic, so I will 100% include European military surplus equipment in the backgrounds if I get that opportunity.)

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Cross-posted from [email protected]. Yeah I know it's on archive.org not youtube, but that's OK according to the mod over there.

Whether or not eXistenZ is cyberpunk or not was previously discussed here.

notes from the original post:

Existenz (stylized as eXistenZ) is a 1999 science fiction horror film written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg. The film follows Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a game designer who finds herself targeted by assassins while playing a virtual reality game of her own creation.

An international co-production between Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, it also stars Jude Law, Ian Holm, Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Christopher Eccleston, Willem Dafoe, and Robert A. Silverman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existenz

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I've mentioned this before, but I'm a fan of the Watch_Dogs series. And I can't believe they're actually making a movie for it. I have no doubt this movie will be terrible but that won't stop me from seeing it in the theater. Can't wait!

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I posted this song earlier, but that was before I found this killer cyberpunk AMV made from Battle Angel Alita. (i.e. the anime that served as the source for the "Alita: Battle Angel" movie)

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From biohackers to ghostbots, William Gibson’s Neuromancer saw the future 40 years ago – why has Silicon Valley defied its warnings?

Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/neuromancer-william-gibson-sci-fi-novels/

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Pantheon (youtube.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/cyberpunk
 
 

Started on AMC+ and now it looks like it's on Prime. I haven't watched it yet but it seems promising and the fight scene I saw looks pretty over the top and epic.

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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/cyberpunk
 
 
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Released in 1995 (the same year as Hackers and The Net!) and I've never heard of this movie. I think it was direct-to-video though, and there are plenty of terrible direct-to-video movies from that time.

Here's a description of the movie from someone's review on imdb:

An evil billionaire develops a weapon that will entrap its victims in a catatonic state of virtual reality. His girlfriend steals the disk (back when DVD discs were considered a big deal) that creates the software for the weapon and amazingly, it's the only copy. She makes friends with a sailor who helps her escape, and they put the software in a tattoo on his back.

Here's a trailer. If you think you can stomach it, the entire movie has been posted to youtube. For what it's worth, one of the reviews says there's a lot of nudity in the movie but I guess it isn't enough to trigger youtube's algorithm for removal. I think it's a little too low-budget even for my tastes so I haven't tried watching but maybe someone here might be interested.

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I happened to stumble upon this today and wanted to talk about it. Bujji & Bhairava is an animated 2-episode mini-series (15 minutes each) prelude to one of the most expensive Indian movies ever made, Kalki 2898 AD.

Now, as far as I can tell from the trailer, Kalki 2898 AD doesn't actually look cyberpunk to me. It looks more like Stargate or Gods of Egypt, where "the gods" have glowy futuristic technology but the humans are just living regular (non-scifi) lives. Yet this 2-episode animated prelude absolutely takes place in an Indian version of a cyberpunk city. The main character is a high-tech low-life bounty hunter who finds an android head and installs into a car to help him capture bounties. He's trying to make enough money so he can enter The Complex. Although I can't tell if The Complex is where all the rich people live (which would be even more cyberpunk) or if it's where "the gods" live (which I'd call less cyberpunk).

Anyway, these two 15-minute episodes are available on Amazon Prime. And the movie they're leading up to, Kalki 2898 AD, releases on June 27.

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